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How can we know there is a God?

How can we know there is a God?

Postby postodave » February 8th, 2009, 1:03 am

So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby agingjb » February 8th, 2009, 9:26 am

George MacDonald wrote in one of the "Curdie" books:

"But if you want me to know you again, ma'am, for certain sure,'
said Curdie, 'could you not give me some sign, or tell me something
about you that never changes - or some other way to know you, or
thing to know you by?

No, Curdie; that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must
know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least
use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way.
It would be but to know the sign of Me - not to know me myself. it
would be no better than if I were to take this emerald out of my
crown and give it to you to take home with you, and you were to
call it me, and talk to it as if it heard and saw and loved you.
Much good that would do you, Curdie! No; you must do what you can
to know me, and if you do, you will."


which may or may not be relevant.
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby postodave » February 8th, 2009, 2:19 pm

I think Macdonald is talking about interpersonal knowing which I would see as a type of self-evident knowing. I have not gone into this because it would complicate matters but it is relevant because God is a thou who reveals himself not an it we can discover. Once you have the concept of self evident knowledge you can make distinctions of types of self-evident knowledge and the I-thou I-it type distinction would probably be the major one. Perhaps I should specifically give both types as I have with theoretical knowledge. Thanks that is a good idea, I'll see if I have room to work it in. Trouble is Buber is so obscure I'll have to simplify him.

But is this what the passage from Macdonald means to you?
So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby agingjb » February 9th, 2009, 9:21 am

I'm not sure I can give a useful answer here, but:

Apart from some special domains (like mathematics) I have a difficulty with certainty. I encounter a lot of it, in politics, philosophy, ethics, the arts, and, most of all, in religious belief. But the certainties I encounter are pretty much mutually incompatible and contradictory.

Virtually everything that I have seen asserted as incontravertibly true must be false. That is not to deny that, somewhere, there is truth.

So I suppose that I feel that, although I may have opinions about which I feel fairly secure, it is best, having no special insights, if I do not add to the inexhaustible fund of certainty. Others, of course, are far better placed than me.

The MacDonald quote seems to capture this, in a way.
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby friendofbill » February 9th, 2009, 4:24 pm

Postodave's obseervation that "God is a thou who reveals himself not an it we can discover" is the whole thing in a nutshell. It seems to me that the idea embodied in the question "How can I know God?" is stating from the wrong end.

Some light on this comes from Thomas Merton: "God utters me likea word containing a partial thought of himself. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of His actuality and find Him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him; that is, i shall find myself. I shall be 'saved.'"

Is it not the idea that there is a "path" or "way" that leads to God responsible for all the chaos of denominations and religions on earth today? Merton suggests that it is not we who seek God, but God Who seeks us, and that the only "way" to know God is to be found by Him and allow Him to take possession. If we are looking for God, we are looking for an "other." Merton goes on to say, "...there is no 'what' that can be called God. There is 'no such thng' as God because God is neither a 'what' nor a 'thing,' but a pure 'Who.' He is the 'Thou' before whom our inmost 'I' springs into awareness. He is the I Am before Whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo, 'I am.'"

Perhaps that is why we are advised: "Be still and know that I am God."

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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby mitchellmckain » February 9th, 2009, 6:45 pm

I don't know about the OP but postodave, agingjb and friendofbill have all said or quoted such excellent things which echo so much of my own thinking there is little I can say but thanks for sharing. There is that wonderful quote from MacDonald, postodave's comment "God is a thou who reveals himself not an it we can discover", and friendofbill's question, "Is it not the idea that there is a "path" or "way" that leads to God responsible for all the chaos of denominations and religions on earth today?" I share agingjb's "difficulty with certainty" but I suppose I can add to postodave's attempt to plumb/capture the meaning of MacDonald's quote by saying that we only know a person in a personal relationship. This is the thought that immediately comes to mind when I read the question that is the title of this thread: "How can we know there is a God?" I immediately think of all the persons in the world and ask how do we know that any particular one of them exists? We can certainly believe what people say about them, we can believe the images and recording brought to us by various media just as many of us see the hand and heart of God in images of nature (in the heavens and among the living things of the earth) or the writings of scripture, but these are only the basis of speculations and impressions. If we truly want to know someone for who they really are, we have to meet them and get to know them in an interpersonal relationship.

But back to the OP I am reminded of Charles Sander's Pierce's "Neglected argument for the Reality of God", where I see him relating these very ideas of a personal relationship to "kind of" scientific methodology, and so I strongly recommend reading that to see if that helps. This living our lives in personal relationship to God, Pierce claims has some points of similarity to a scientific test of an hypothesis. Anyway that is all that I shall say of it and let you read it for yourself.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Neglect ... ity_of_God
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby postodave » February 9th, 2009, 7:25 pm

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But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » February 10th, 2009, 4:37 am

Several people have talked about mathematics, and I'll tell you something I have been thinking about in reference to the existence of G-d.

0 does not exist. However, a system which allows a reference to 0, like like our numeric system, is demonstrably superior to one like Roman numerals, which does not allow reference to a 0. (Nothing against Roman numerals of course). You could not build skyscrapers without a zero, and the type of mathematical calculations that makes possible. Zero is the pivot point, the origen of our mathematical system.
Even though zero does not exist, it is a property of the system, and a system which allows reference to zero is demonstrably superior to one which does not.

And that is sort of how I feel about G-d. You don't necessarily need to demonstrate the existence of that one element. Many people have made hypotheses and tested the system--thus all the people who find faith completely compatible with skyscrapers, automobiles, and the rest of the modern world.
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby postodave » February 10th, 2009, 10:02 am

So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby agingjb » February 10th, 2009, 10:36 am

I mentioned mathematics as a area within which certainty might be found; a limited exception to the slogan "certainty leads nowhere".

I shall refrain from an extended essay on maths and its philosophy (touching on transfinite arithmetic, Godel, Cohen, the ontology of the numbers (including zero, which is an acceptable answer to "how many")), because it's not relevant here (and anyway I'm not competent to do more than point at the literature) .

But, having some (but not enough) insight into the complexities of mathematics, I would suppose that theology would be, in some respects, incomparably more profound.
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby postodave » February 10th, 2009, 7:26 pm

Hi aginggb - I'm sure I'm even less competent but the whole area is facinating. In any case the question for me is whether their is such a thing as intuitive knowing - and if there are analogies between knowing 1+1=2 and knowing there is a God.

I just wonder in what sense 0 can be said not to exist and 1 to exist. Whether class theory is right or not I'm sure there is a category error in there somehwere.
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But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » February 11th, 2009, 5:50 am

"I don't care if it is wrong," said one of the moles. "I'd do it again."
"Hush, hush" said the other animals.
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby postodave » February 14th, 2009, 12:43 pm

There have been religious systems predicated on the absence of God at least as we normally understand that word. The Sea of Faith school in the Anglican Church would be one example, the secular theology of Harvey Cox might be another. Apparently just before he died Paul Tillich had a meeting with Cox. Cox suggested to Tillich that what he had always experienced as the presence of God was really the absence of God. Now people had been suggesting for years that Tillich's brand of theism was really a form of atheism but this time the argument seems to have struck home and Tillich was alarmed. His wife says this shock contributed to his dying shortly afterwards. Personally I take Tillich's point here that a theology without God, what Cupitt calls non-theistic Christianity is bit of dead end.

Anyway I can see that zero is intangible but then so are all the other numbers. I can see 1 of something but I can never just see one.
So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby AllanS » February 14th, 2009, 10:21 pm

I know things like pleasure and pain, though I certainly can't define them. I couldn't communicate this knowledge to an alien who has had no experience of such things. I can only say "Pain is nasty", or "Pain hurts." ie. Pain is painful. I can tell you that I feel pain when various nerves are stimulated and various chemicals slosh about in the brain, but unless you also have had a direct experience of pain, all such talk would be meaningless. The nervous impulses, the chemicals, are not the experience.

In chemistry, we have elements that aren't made of simpler atoms. Perhaps we also have elemental experiences that can't be broken into simpler experiences.

I think it's the same with God. Faith is a gift. Unless God opens our eyes, we will never see. To the blind, all God-talk will be meaningless. The most sane prayer of all is this: God, if you exist, if you are good, open my blind eyes. Believers need to pray this prayer as earnestly as anyone. What makes me so sure my God is not a mere idol, a human construct? (Pretty likely, I reckon.) It reminds me of Moses. The thing he most desired was to see the face of God... not some proof of God, but a direct experience.
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Re: How can we know there is a God?

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » February 15th, 2009, 4:39 am

"I don't care if it is wrong," said one of the moles. "I'd do it again."
"Hush, hush" said the other animals.
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